Travis Decker manhunt breakthrough as FBI close huge section of national forest

A large section of a national forest is closed as authorities continue to search for a dad alleged to have killed his three young daughters.

Travis Decker is accused of suffocating his daughters Paityn, nine, Evelyn, eight, and five-year-old Olivia, whose bodies were found in his abandoned truck in June. The former soldier has since been on the run and, although authorities had said last month there was no evidence to suggest he was alive, police have today refocused the manhunt on Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington.

This is where the girls were found dead, days after Travis, 33, failed to return the youngsters to their mother following contact time. The "coordinated search" centered around the campsite where the truck was discovered has already seen police clear lush overgrowth.

But it is unclear what has led police to return to Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, 1.5 million acres of rugged terrain of mountains, lakes, woodland and other environments. Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison said yesterday: "We will not relent, we will not give up until Travis Decker is taken into custody."

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The FBI is leading the search, nearly three months after the sisters were found dead. After this discovery, police warned members of the public not to approach the man, who was a full-time member of the Washington National Guard for three years after joining the army. The dad went part time in 2024.

Despite Decker's military survival training, police have expressed doubt over his ability to survive in the wilderness. Sheriff Morrison continued: "He has to be perfect every single day. We just have to be perfect once... This (his team's desire) is not going to go away until Travis is located.

"While this latest operation may or may not yield new findings, our promise is that we will not stop until we have exhausted every possible avenue to find him and to bring closure to this case."

Divers will search lakes across Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, the FBI confirmed in the press conference yesterday. Peter Orth, the FBI's supervisory senior resident agent in the area, said: "You can't be too thorough in a search like this. It is such incredibly dense vegetation that anybody who walks down one of these trails could walk 10 metres off the trail and no one would ever know they're there."

The US Marshals Service is offering a reward of up to $20,000 (£15,000) for information leading to Decker’s capture. However, the search is being carried out in "extremely challenging" terrain across Okanogan-Wenatchee, established as a national forest in 1911.